


strike a pose (you’re kinda cute y’know)

by superoverdramatic



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Character Death, this is literally the softest thing i’ve ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 12:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20675501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superoverdramatic/pseuds/superoverdramatic
Summary: His lips skim over the bare skin of her shoulder, too light to be considered a kiss, and yet enough to make her shiver.In which Guzmán likes taking pictures of Nadia.





	strike a pose (you’re kinda cute y’know)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is other than these two are my newest hyperfixation and I literally have no self-control. wrote this in a matter of hours. no editing. we die like men.  
I googled the cast list, so if names/spellings of background characters are wrong, wikipedia is to blame.  
this is set sometime in the future, I assume after season 3, so as much as I love characters like carla and christian, I literally have no idea what's going to happen to them and they don't really appear in this. I also don’t know much about the spanish education system, so this might not be entirely accurate as I based it more on the british system where you can go to school up to age eighteen.  
  
title from a uk grime song that I’m sure none of you have ever heard of.

_Guzmán’s father is arrested two days after Marina’s birthday._

_Nadia almost cries as he’s lead from the house in handcuffs, face ashen. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced under the media’s flashing camera bulbs. She isn’t upset because she particularly cares for Ventura—since Guzmán introduced her to his family, the man has been nothing but condescending, even downright hostile on a bad day. _

_She guesses he sees no value in having her around if he isn’t able to exploit her for his own gain._

_No, Nadia’s eyes are tight with tears because she feels Guzmán trembling beside her, knows that he’s much more fragile so soon after having to endure his sister’s birthday without her, and she doesn’t know how he’ll handle this. She turns away from the window, peeking up at him, and winces internally at his stony expression, his jaw a slice of glass._

_“Guzmán—”_

_He turns away before she can finish her sentence, leaving her to stare after him. The shouts from the journalists outside are loud enough to drown out the quiet click of his bedroom door as he shuts it behind him._

The air in Guzmán’s room is hazy and warm when Nadia blinks awake. It’s early, earlier than she wants to be up, but her internal clock is wired to six in the morning, even on a lazy Saturday like this. She stretches a little, face-down with her cheek half-pressed into her folded arm where it rests atop the pillow. She uses her other arm to reach out for her boyfriend, squinting one eye open when she’s met with nothing but cool sheets.

A quiet clicking noise from behind her has her flipping onto her back, wiping sleepily at her eyes and stifling a yawn. Her confusion turns to amusement when she’s met with the sight of Guzmán’s camera phone aimed directly at her, clicking softly as he continues capturing photos of her.

“What are you doing?”

He grins crookedly at her, snapping a few more pictures before he drops his phone onto the bed. “Nothing.”

Nadia rolls her eyes, pushing the covers back and crawling to where he’s standing at the foot of his bed wearing nothing but a pair of pyjama pants that are too long for his legs. The material pools on the floor around his feet.

“It’s still early.”

He wraps his arms around her when she’s close enough, fingers tracing the length of her spine and toying with the hem of his old t-shirt that she’s long since claimed as her own. He tries for a careless shrug, but she sees the seriousness behind his eyes as he gazes down at her. “I just wanted a picture of you like this.”

Nadia hums, half of her confused and the other half still asleep. “Like what?”

“Here with me…relaxed, I don’t know. Just…I like seeing you here. I want to remember it.”

She presses her happy smile into the bare skin of his chest, below his clavicle, feeling her cheeks heat up. “I’m here all the time, Guzmán.” She feels rather than sees his smile against the top of her head, and her stomach swoops with that giddy feeling that she gets around him.

“I wish you were here all the time.”

Nadia tries her best to swallow the smile threatening to split her cheeks. She’s never spent the whole night before, never had the chance to appreciate him tender like this in the faint light of dawn.

She likes it.

Nadia flops back onto the bed, groaning exaggeratedly when Guzmán crawls on top of her and folds his long body into her. She’s found that he’s just like a cat, wanting to be petted all the time and curling around her when he’s craving affection.

He looks up at her after a few minutes of silence, eyes surprisingly bright despite the early hour.

“I love you. I’m in love with you.” It’s said as a statement, a simple fact. He’s said it before. He knows that she knows.

It still knocks her sideways anyway, how much she loves him too.

_“The sound of shattering glass wakes Nadia from her fitful sleep on _ _Guzmán’s couch. It’s dark outside. She must have been asleep for a few hours. There’s a painful knot in her neck that makes her wince as she moves._

_A high-pitched scream has her off the sofa and running down the hallway. _

_She rounds the corner into the dining room, barely holding back a scream of her own when she sees Guzmán standing motionless by the table, blood dripping from his hairline and a broken wine bottle at his feet. The stark colour of the alcohol mingles with his blood as it drips onto the once pristine carpet. _

_Guzmán’s mother is standing beside him, crying apologies as she presses shaking hands to his face. _

_She’s drunk. _

_Nadia is moving before she can even think, pushing herself between the mother and son and shoving the older woman away._

_“Don’t.”_

_Laura stumbles, catching herself on the table. Her eyes are glazed and unfocused. Her hand leaves a bloody print on the glass table top. _

_Nadia wants to slap her._

_She turns to Guzmán, touching a gentle hand to his forehead. The wound is long, sluggishly dripping blood. _

_“Guzmán?”_

_He doesn’t respond, doesn’t even seem to realise that she’s there. He’s staring at the broken bottle, face blank._

_“What did you do?” Nadia rounds on his mother, anger licking hot up her spine. Laura is crying loudly, too drunk to realise that she’s smeared her son’s blood on her own face and clothes. Nadia feels sick._

_She turns back to Guzmán, anxious hands ghosting over his forehead and cheek and chin, all stained red, red, red with blood, and she doesn’t know what to do, how to make this better, how to heal this broken, angry boy that she loves._

_“Guzmán, we should go to the hospital,” except she doesn’t know how they’d get there because he has a head wound and she doesn’t know how to drive and his mother is so drunk that she’s barely able to stand. She tries to remember where she dropped her phone when she arrived._

_“You should go home, Nadia.” A pause._

_“What?” There’s a steady ringing noise in her ears. She’s suddenly hyperaware of her breathing, how fast and loud it is. Hurt rushes through her veins and her heart sinks into her stomach, beating bloody and raw. He isn’t even looking at her._

_“Go home. I don’t want you here.”_

_The ringing is getting louder, and she feels like she’s the one bleeding, like he’s picked the bottle up from the floor and stabbed her right in the gut. His voice is cold, flat, as he delivers the killing blow._

_“I don’t need your help. I don’t need your fucking pity.”_

_She barely hears him now, the ringing so loud that it hurts. She can barely breathe. She doesn’t know when she moves. All she knows is that she’s suddenly outside his front door, in the pouring rain with no way to get home, and she’s pretty sure she left her phone somewhere in his house. She’s pretty sure whatever they are is over. _

_He’s never been like that with her before. She’s never known him to be cruel. Nadia bursts into tears burying her head into her hands as the ringing gets louder_

_and louder_

_until all there is_

_is a steady_

_ringing_

_noise._

They graduate from Las Encinas on a picture-perfect summer afternoon. The sun is high and proud in the sky, dotted with cartoonish white clouds. Nadia adjusts her cap where it sits atop her head, curls tucked neatly beneath her hijab, smiling proudly as Guzmán steps closer to the stage. When his name is finally called, she cups her hands around her mouth to cheer as loudly as she can, clapping wildly and laughing at the faint blush that dusts his cheeks as he goes. The people around her shoot amused looks her way, but she’s too focused on him to care.

It feels like hours until her own group is called up. When it’s her turn, she strides as confidently as she can across the stage, smile splitting her face when she hears the whooping from somewhere in the back of the hall where she knows her family is sitting. When she finally grasps her diploma and shakes Azucena’s hand, it’s as if a weight that she didn’t know she was carrying lifts from her shoulders. She’s not sorry to say goodbye to this place.

She turns to the crowd one last time as she walks off, searching for Guzmán in the crowd as she goes. His grin is as wide as hers when she finally spots him, his phone aimed right at her as he snaps a picture of her moment. She laughs, a bright, happy sound, waving to him as she passes.

They meet up after the tediously long ceremony is finally done. He’s standing with their parents, between his mother and her own, the awkward smile on his face morphing into a genuine one when he spots her approaching. His expression makes her heart race.

She’s watched him struggle in the time since his father’s trial, knows how much Guzmán misses him and Marina and all the other people that he lost in the time since her death, but with his expression wide open like it is now, Nadia can almost forget about the nights when he still presses his tears into his pillow.

He mutters something lowly to their parents and extricates himself from them, approaching her with _that look_ in his eye.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

He wraps her up in his arms, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple and lifting her feet off the ground. She tucks her head into the space between his neck and shoulder.

It’s exhilarating, being with him like this.

When he finally lets her down, the first thing she sees over his shoulder is Lu’s sour face. She’s standing just a few metres away, staring at them with narrowed eyes.

Nadia almost wants to finally let her have it, to let years of rage and hatred finally roll off her tongue, or use Lu’s secret that she’s kept all this time to humiliate her the way Lu didn’t hesitate to do to her all those years ago.

But she doesn’t do any of that. She looks up at Guzmán, letting her shoulders drop and allowing the tension to bleed out of her limbs.

She’s happy. It’s the beginning, middle and end of everything. There’s no space for anything else.

_For a second, Nadia isn’t sure what woke her, blinking blearily in the blackness of her room. And then her phone buzzes. Again. And again. By the time her brain catches up with her, the phone has gone silent on her desk, but there’s barely a moment before it starts up again, vibrating loudly with an incoming call. _

_Nadia rolls off her mattress, kicking her sheets away as she stumbles across the room and snatches up the offending object. The brightness of her screen makes her squint as she checks the caller ID. _

_Guzmán._

_Like a jolt to her system, she’s suddenly wide awake, staring at the screen as it goes dark again. Another beat, and he’s calling her once more, the smiling picture of him at odds with how he looked the last time she saw him at school, dark bags under his eyes and a stark white bandage stuck to his equally pale forehead as he shoved her phone at her with a mumbled apology. _

_She debates for a second whether to pick up, whether she really wants to talk to this boy who left her to find her way home in the pouring rain, who doesn’t seem to care that she had to ask at six separate stores until she found one where they would let her use the phone, who can’t even seem to look her in the eye anymore._

_In the end, she can’t resist torturing herself. She finally hits the green button, bringing the phone up to her face. Her mind goes blank and she forgets how to speak, listening to his heavy breaths on the other end of the line._

_“Nadia?” His voice is slurred, and she’s sure that he must have more liquor than blood running through his veins._

_She’s silent._

_“Nadia, please.”_

_She sighs, finally relenting and speaking her first words to him in days. “What do you want, Guzmán?”_

_He lets out a sigh of relief, as though he was worried that she wasn’t really on the other end. It’s endearing. She hates him._

_“The police came to our house with a warrant today. They’re seizing my father’s assets in his company.”_

_She doesn’t know what to say._

_“I’m sorry.” I love you._

_Neither of them speaks for a long minute, listening to the other breathe, soaking in the other’s presence. Her chest aches with missing him._

_“She’s really gone, isn’t she?” _

_It takes Nadia a moment to understand who he’s talking about, to comprehend the abrupt change in topic, but when she does, it hits her like a gut punch. She inhales sharp and painful, feeling it burn in her chest. “Guzmán—”_

_“Do you know what I said to Samuel when he told me what Marina was planning?” _

_Nadia doesn’t want to hear this. She’s not sure if he’s sober enough to understand what he’s saying to her, and it feels like she’s taking advantage of him like this._

_“I said that if anything happened to her, it would be her own fault.” He laughs, an ugly, humourless sound that cuts through her, and Nadia hears the swish of liquid on his side as he takes another swig of whatever he’s drinking. “I said that about my own sister, and now she’s fucking dead.”_

_Nadia can almost taste his heartbreak, sharp as blades on her tongue._

_“I miss her.” He pauses for a moment and her heart is in her throat. “I miss you.”_

_Nadia can’t hold back the sob that bubbles up, clapping her hand to her mouth as she cries. She hates him. She loves him. She misses him too._

_“I’m so sorry, Nadia.”_

_“Guzmán, I can’t do this with you anymore. I don’t want to be in a relationship where you hurt me anytime things are bad.”_

_“I never want to hurt you. I love you.” Her breath hitches. They’ve never said that out loud to each other before._

_“You’re drunk.”_

_“Yes. And I love you now, and when I’m sober. I love you when I’m awake and when I’m asleep and all the time in between. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.”_

_This isn’t how their first time saying those words was meant to be. It makes her cry harder._

_She hangs up._

Nadia’s phone dings with an incoming message where she’s left it charging on her desk. She shoves her rolled up towel into her bag, swinging it still open over her shoulder as she hops over the discarded pile of clothes on her floor to pull her charger from the wall. She drops it into the open rucksack, unlocking her phone as she slides her feet into a pair of sandals and smiling at the message from Guzmán letting her know that he’s outside.

She makes it halfway across the store before she runs into her parents. Her mother is behind the counter serving a customer, and her father is busy stocking shelves.

“Nadia.”

She freezes on her way to the door, turning to face her dad.

His gaze is scrutinising and he looks over her slowly, taking in the blue sundress that leaves her arms and legs bare, and the riot of curls that she’s left loose and free. He swallows visibly.

“You…you look beautiful.”

Nadia smiles, feeling a surge of affection for the man. It’s been hard for him to accept how things have changed, but despite his stubborn nature, she knows that he loves his children enough to try. Since he and Omar started speaking again, he’s been more tolerant, trying his hardest to understand and accept both of their boyfriends, extending an open invitation for Ander and Guzmán to stop by for dinner one night.

Nadia knows that neither she nor her brother will ever take him up on it, but it was nice of him to offer.

“Thank you, Baba.” She rounds the fruit stands to press a kiss to his cheek, throwing a careless wave at her mother as she skips out of the store.

Guzmán is parked across the street in a cherry red convertible with sunshades over his eyes, the first thing she sees when she steps outside. She would roll her eyes if the look wasn’t working so well for her. She feels the warmth of his gaze immediately, biting the corner of her lip to try and control the force of her grin.

As she approaches, he whips out his phone, pointing it at her and, presumably, taking a picture or ten if she knows him at all. She sticks her tongue out. He laughs.

She flops over the door, pressing a kiss to his lips before any words are exchanged.

“Where’s this from?” she asks as she tugs the car door open, dropping her bag in the back and sliding onto the sun-warmed leather seat.

“It’s one of the few things we still have from my father.” For the first time, Guzmán’s voice isn’t bitter when he mentions the man. “He left it to me, and I guess my mom wanted to let me decide what to do with it.”

Nadia feels like she’s in a movie in this car, can only imagine the picture they make in it.

“Ready?”

She meets his cheeky grin with one of her own. “Ready.”

_She does her best to avoid Guzmán_ _on Monday, waiting in the girl’s locker room until first period is about to start. It’s all for naught, because when she enters the classroom, he isn’t even there. As the day passes, he isn’t in any of their shared classes and, when she checks her phone at lunch, he hasn’t sent her any messages._

_She isn’t sure why she thought he would, but she’s still disappointed. _

_The next day is more of the same, and the day after that until Nadia is so worried that she debates trying to convince someone to drive her over to his house. _

_Her nerves are frayed by Thursday. Guzmán_ _is in first period. She finally exhales a breath._

_Their eyes meet when she walks in, and he shoots her a small, careful smile. He looks better, the dark circles under his eyes starting to fade and his back straight and sure. He looks more like the boy she fell in love with._

_He waits for her after class, eyes belying his confident posture._

_“Can we talk?”_

_Nadia nods, breathless as she follows him out of the room, and then the building. The sky is grey, but it isn’t raining for the first time in more than a week. Guzmán_ _sits on the steps and, after a second of hesitation, Nadia follows his lead._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_She looks down at the books in her lap, irritation vying with concern until she feels like she might come out of her skin. “I’ve heard that before.”_

_“I meant it.” _

_She knows he’s talking about his apology, but the weight of his words makes her wonder if he remembers what he said to her on the phone the last time they spoke. She shakes her head._

_“Guzmán_, _I don’t want to keep doing this with you. It’s too much for me.” She watches his face as a number of emotions flit across it, until he settles on something that looks like determination._

_“I started going to therapy with my mom. That’s why I haven’t been at school.”_

_That’s…not what Nadia was expecting him to say._

_“She’s going to rehab. And she’s divorcing my dad.”_

_Holy shit._

_Nadia is dumbfounded, wide eyes staring at Guzmán_ _as she tries to gauge his emotional state. He looks almost…happy? That can’t be right._

_“Are you okay?”_

_He huffs out a laugh and, although it’s small, it’s much more genuine than any she’s heard from him in a while. “You still care?”_

_Nadia looks down awkwardly._

_“I’m…not sure how I am, but I’m working on it.”_

_She nods. “I’m glad.”_

_He turns more fully towards her, brushing a hand over her arm before he drops it back to his side. The small contact is enough to send a frisson of electricity dancing along her nerve endings._

_“Nadia, I know I don’t deserve it, but I still want this. I want to be with you.”_

_“Guzmán—”_

_“I know I hurt you and I will never stop apologising for it, but I’m going to be selfish. I want you, and it doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow. I just…I want to know that there’s still a chance for us. I have to know if I ruined this permanently or if you think you could ever…” He trails off, but his eyes remain earnest where they are trained on her._

_She loves him. But the trust is gone. His capacity for cruelty scares her sometimes. She hates him._

_“I don’t know.”_

The ride to the beach is carefree, the wind whipping through her hair and stealing the breath from her lungs as they speed along the open roads towards their destination.

By the time they arrive, the end of year party is in full swing. Kids from their class are spread out across the sand and someone has hooked a pair of speakers up to their car, which are now blaring reggaeton music. Guzmán offers Nadia a hand as they step into the crowd, calling out greetings and using the other one to wave away the beers offered to him as they pass through.

“Guzmán!” Samuel is standing near the water’s edge, feet and chest bare, waving at the couple as they make their way down the beach. “Nadia! Over here!”

The two boys clap each other on the back in greeting, and then Samu sweeps Nadia up in a tight hug.

“I’m happy you guys came,” he whispers into her ear, holding her for a moment longer before he releases her. She presses a gentle hand to his cheek, smiling softly at him. There’s a lingering sadness behind his eyes, and she knows that he’s thinking of Marina on this momentous day in their lives. She isn’t sure it will ever truly go away, the familiar shadows that she still sometimes sees reflected in Guzmán’s eyes as well. All of them still bear the scars of the last two years.

Samu pastes a smile back on his face, flinging an arm over her shoulders, and tugs her over to the group. Guzmán has joined them sitting on the sand, and she wastes no time dropping into the circle of his legs.

“Everything okay?”

She nods, not wanting anything to ruin the mood. There will be time for sorrow later, but today is a good day.

Nadia looks around the group, smiling coyly at Rebeka where she’s sitting beside Samu. She knows that things between them are complicated, that his feelings for Carla remain unresolved, but for now it’s nice to pretend that things are straightforward and she’s simply teasing her friend over her blatant crush.

Rebeka responds by flipping her off. Nadia laughs, leaning back into Guzmán’s chest. His arm comes around her, holding his phone in front of the two of them, the front-facing camera open. Nadia turns her face into him. He takes at least six pictures anyway.

Omar finds her as the sun is getting low in the sky, bathing everything in gold. His eyes sparkle and she spies a new tattoo beneath his open shirt as she steps into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and breathing him in.

“You look good,” she comments when she pulls back. His eyes sparkle and she realises that she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this happy, free to be himself and live in his truth. Her eyes are drawn behind him to where part of the reason for his newfound joy is standing.

Ander looks awkward, shifting in place, eyes darting ever so often to something behind her. Or someone.

He and Guzmán haven’t spoken in such a long time, pretty much since Polo was first arrested and accused of Marina’s murder. Nadia knows that it’s a sore spot for her boyfriend even now. Despite everything that happened, and though she knows he’ll argue it until he’s blue in the face, she knows that Guzmán misses his friends. He still struggles not having them in his life after so many years as a close-knit unit.

Ander meets her gaze suddenly, and she jerks her head in a barely perceptible nod. He hesitates a moment longer, unsure, before taking a fortifying breath and crossing over to where Guzmán is standing beside Samu. Nadia turns to watch as Ander taps Guzmán on the shoulder and her boyfriend turns around.

There’s a tense moment where neither of them speaks. Nadia feels Omar stiffen behind her, ready to jump in at any second.

And then they’re talking.

Nadia can’t hear anything but the music from where she’s standing, but Ander gestures to the side with his head and Guzmán nods in agreement, following behind him as the two go off to a quieter place to talk. Nadia meets his eye as he goes, offering a supportive quirk of her lips before he’s gone.

She feels someone’s gaze on her and turns to meet a pair of dark eyes across the beach. Much like Guzmán’s friendship with Ander, her own with Valerio ended a long time ago and they haven’t spoken since. Unlike Guzmán, however, she has no desire to reconcile with him after what he did to her. Although her humiliation was short-lived, as the sex-tape was quickly overshadowed by Polo’s arrest, Nadia will never forgive him or Lu for their equal culpability in violating her privacy and trust.

She turns away. There’s an obvious metaphor there.

_She thinks they’re friends again._

_It’s been almost two months since _ _Guzm__á__n told her that he’s in therapy, and there’s been a clear change in him._

_He’s not so angry._

_He thinks before he speaks._

_He communicates with her in a way that he never did before, open and honest and so painfully sincere that it makes her heart hurt. He wants her to trust him. She’s not sure if she can._

_They’re eating lunch in companionable silence when his phone starts vibrating on the table. Guzmán brushes the back of his hand against his mouth as he swallows, the relaxed lines of his face hardening into something anxious when he reads his caller ID. The conversation is short, and his side is mainly curt, one-worded responses to whoever is on the other end. When he hangs up, he’s gripping the phone tightly in his fist. Nadia thinks he might be strong enough to snap it in two._

_“It’s the rehab centre. My mom didn’t go in today.”_

_Her heart sinks. “Has she called you?” She knows the answer before he says it. His dejected tone rips a hole in her heart anyway._

_“No.”_

_They’d been doing so well. She should have known it was too good to be true._

It’s much later when Guzmán finally reappears. The sun has fully descended and the night sky is permeated by small pinpricks of brilliant white.

At some point, someone started a bonfire and the air ripples with the heat of it. Rebeka is leaning against Nadia, drunkenly singing along to the music and making up her own words when she forgets the real ones. Nadia huffs out a laugh, rubbing an affectionate hand over her friend’s hair. Eventually, Rebeka leaps to her feet, proclaiming how much she wants to dance, and Nadia watches fondly as she staggers away.

A flash takes her by surprise, and she turns in the direction it came from. Guzmán is smiling sheepishly at her, tucking his phone into his back pocket as he approaches from out of the dark. Nadia stands, brushing sand off her thighs.

“You okay?”

He nods, choosing to curl his entire body around her and tuck his face into her neck rather than speak. She instinctively buries her hand into his hair, stroking through the silky strands. His lips skim over the bare skin of her shoulder, too light to be considered a kiss, and yet enough to make her shiver.

“You didn’t kill him, did you?”

Guzmán’s chuckle rumbles through him, making her skin glow with something warm and content.

Another flash goes off, breaking the moment, and she glares at Samu as Guzmán pulls back and unwraps his long limbs from around her. Samuel has the grace to look sheepish even as he admires the picture that he just took of them.

“It’s a good photo.”

She has to agree when he shows it to them, their intimate embrace framed by fire. She sends a copy to her phone to set as her lock screen even as she pretends to grumble.

She can’t be too angry when she looks at Guzmán’s reverent expression as he admires the picture, also sending it to himself.

Before she has a chance to see what he does with it, he’s pulling his shirt over his head and dropping both it and his phone onto the sand, toeing off his shoes and tugging her along behind him as he races into the sea. Nadia screams when the icy waves hit her skin, grateful that she had the mind to put her swimming costume on under her dress.

Guzmán pulls her into him and presses a salty kiss to her smiling lips. She feels like her joy must be radiating off her skin.

_He’s whispering when he calls her that night. It’s become their routine over the past few weeks, Nadia waiting up for her phone to ring with his name. They usually end up falling asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing. Nadia’s taken to charging it in the outlet by her bed and placing it beside her pillow. _

_It’s almost midnight when his name finally lights up her screen. She still feels giddy with it._

_“Hi.”_

_She loves him. “Hi.”_

_“I spoke to my mom.”_

_“Oh yeah? What did she say?”_

_It takes him a second before he responds with, “she went to visit Marina.”_

_Oh. “Oh.”_

_“Yeah.” The silence is heavy now, but not in a bad way. Not like before. “She apologised for worrying me.”_

_“Good. I’m glad.”_

_They listen to each other breathe. She wishes he was here._

_“She’s selling the house.”_

_Nadia jerks up into a seated position, suddenly alert. “What?” The airy feeling in her stomach turns to stone, and her words become ash in her mouth. He’s moving?_

_“She said she saw new apartments on her way back home, and she put down a deposit.”_

_“Just like that?”_

_“Just like that.” She hears the shrug in his voice. “She wants to be closer to Marina, and she said the memories here are…it hurts her too much to live here now. After everything.”_

_And how can she argue that?_

_“Will you still come to school?” Nadia almost doesn’t want to hear his answer, afraid that she’s too late and these phone calls are all she’ll ever get with him. Maybe she missed her chance. _

_“Of course.”_

_The relief is like a wave, crashing over her._

_”We won’t be that far awa—”_

_“I love you.” She has to tell him. He has to know. She doesn’t want to worry about losing him without ever having said the words._

_He’s quiet, so quiet. She holds her breath._

_“Can I see you?”_

Guzmán’s head is resting in her lap, and Nadia is stroking through his hair. Just like a cat.

The movie on the screen is mind-numbingly dull, and she’s barely keeping her eyes from drooping when Guzmán’s phone buzzes beside her elbow.

“Who is it?”

She picks it up, unlocking it to see who the incoming message is from. When she stiffens, Guzmán pushes up from his place on her legs. His expression is apprehensive and his voice dropping to a worried rumble as he repeats the question.

“Who is it?”

She doesn’t want to tell him, but she knows he’ll see the message either way. “Ander.”

He tenses at the name. Things are better between the boys, but better doesn’t necessarily mean good. He scratches idly at his jaw.

“What does he want?”

_Oh God._

“He said…he said he’s…” _She can’t say it._ “He said he’s going to Polo’s sentencing later.”

Guzmán is a statue. Something explodes on the TV screen. Nadia wishes she could turn back time.

“Okay.”

She swallows roughly. “Okay?”

Guzmán inhales a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly. “I’m okay.”

She knows he’s been making strides in therapy, but some part of Nadia still expects the reckless, angry Guzmán to make an appearance any day now. She’s stunned when he sinks back into the couch cushions, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Are you sure?”

He nods, eyes still closed. Nadia watches him closely, anxiously wringing her hands.

“It’s alright if you aren’t. You can tell me.”

He smiles, a small, tight thing that she can tell is at least half fake. Eventually, he opens his eyes again, reaching out to tug her closer to him.

“It’s painful. It will always hurt to remember what happened. But I’m really okay, I swear.”

She wants to believe him, hopes with all her heart that he’s telling her the truth, but some part of her is still sceptical. He can tell.

“You want to know why I’m not angry?”

Nadia nods, looking down at his hands when he plucks his phone from between her fingers and puts his four-digit code in. He clicks a few icons, handing the phone back to Nadia when he’s done.

She frowns confusedly when she sees that she’s in his photo app.

“What—”

“Just look.”

She shoots a suspicious look at him, turning back to the phone when he grins in response. She inhales sharply when she realises what she’s looking at.

_It’s her._

Photo after photo of her in his camera roll, candid pictures of her stretching back months, laughing with Rebeka, talking with Samu and Omar, hunched over her school books and chewing absently on the end of her pen, shots of her in her uniform and out of it, pictures of her under his sheets, her shoulders exposed and bare.

There’s one where Guzmán’s nose is pressed into her cheek. It’s imperfect, taken way too close to their faces, most of the frame taken up by their smiles. Her stomach swoops.

“I can’t change the past, Nadia, no matter how much I wish I could sometimes.” His voice is velvet. “Being with you...it makes all that other stuff hurt less.”

_She loves him._

”Having these feels like I’m taking you with me all the time, even when you aren’t here. It makes everything better.”

_She loves him._

She clicks tentatively on the earliest picture that she can see of herself, exhaling tremulously. Her face is half-shrouded in darkness, eyes shut and mouth stretched in a lazy grin. She remembers this night, the first time she snuck out of her room to spend the early hours of the morning with him. 

_She loves him._

_They lie together in silence, side by side, arms and legs pressed together and breathing in sync. Nadia knows that he’ll have to drive her home soon so she can sneak in the back before her parents wake up. She knows that there’s still a lot that she and _ _Guzm__á__n have to talk about. But in this moment right now, in the stillness of his room at almost four in the morning, Nadia can barely bring herself to care._

_Then, suddenly, Guzmán is moving, fishing his phone out of his pocket and rolling onto his side, hovering over her to take_ _a picture of her lying sprawled across his mattress._

_“What was that for?”_

_He smiles, the soft crooked thing that’s reserved just for her. _

_“I just wanted a picture of you.”_


End file.
